Answer:
First-generation New Englanders where English Puritan Separatists who left England in order to found a colony under their religious conception. They had a very specific view of life and religon, and built many New England institution around those beliefs.
Recent English acestors were either the descendats of those Puritan Separatists, or were people belonging to other religous denominations.
Their future New England descendants would be much more secular, but would maintain several of the insitutions and the traditions that they introduced in the region.
